For children living in the Gaza Strip, 2014 was a year that brought violence, fear, and loss. The Israeli military offensive that lasted 50 days between July 8 and August 26, dubbed Operation Protective Edge, killed 547 Palestinian children, 535 of them as a direct result of Israeli attacks.1 Another 3,374 children suffered injuries in attacks, including over 1,000 children whose wounds rendered them permanently disabled.

The President of the Security Council presents her compliments to the
members of the Council and has the honour to transmit herewith, for
their information, a copy of a letter dated 27 April 2015 from the
Secretary-General addressed to the President of the Security Council,
and its enclosure.

This letter and its enclosure will be issued as a document of the Security Council under the symbol S/2015/286.

In 2014, after unprecedented destruction and suffering in Gaza, international donors pledged $3.5bn and a change in approach. Six months later, reconstruction and recovery have barely begun, there has been no accountability for violations of international law, and Gaza remains cut off from the West Bank. This paper outlines an achievable course of action to address the root causes of the recurrent conflict and put international engagement with Gaza on the right course.

Hundreds of Palestinian children work on Israeli settlement farms in the occupied West Bank, the majority located in the Jordan Valley. This report documents rights abuses against Palestinian children as young as 11 years old, who earn around US $19 for a full day working in the settlement agricultural industry. Many drop out of school and work in conditions that can be hazardous due to pesticides, dangerous equipment, and extreme heat.

Early on the afternoon of 8 July 2014, the first day of the fighting in the Gaza Strip last summer, a person speaking on behalf of the Israeli military phoned one of the apartments in the home of the Kaware’ family, in Khan Yunis. He told residents that the military was planning to destroy the building and that they must immediately evacuate it. More than an hour later, a warning missile was launched at the roof. The families left the building, but dozens of local residents continued to gather in

The language of conflict has changed enormously. Today, engagements are often fought and justified through a public mandate to protect civilians. And yet the weapons used, and the way they are used, far too often pose a great danger to those civilians.
The use of explosive weapons in populated areas puts civilians at grave risk of death and injury, as AOAV has documented over several years

Background: The UN has estimated that Israel’s attack on Gaza between 8 July and 26 August 2014 resulted in the deaths of 2204 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and thousands left with permanent disabilities.

"There
was a call for help in a house which had been randomly shelled at
Mujama’a St, East Gaza City. It was nearly 01:00 on the last day of
Ramadan. The house was in complete chaos when the team arrived. There
was dense smoke everywhere and a very bad smell which hardly allowed
them to breathe. I got the stretcher and the flashlight and entered the
building, where I immediately saw a badly injured woman under the
staircase. I took her to the ambulance and went back to the house. We
managed to fit 3-6 people into the second ambulance…. What shocked me

The people of Gaza are facing the colossal task of rebuilding homes, roads and schools following the hostilities between Hamas and the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) last summer. Disagreements over border access and the importation of construction equipment and materials have delayed the removal of rubble and rebuilding. As a result, environmental risks to civilian health linger in Gaza despite calls for greater urgency and co-operation between The Palestinian Authority, Israel and the United Nations.

More than 20 leading doctors and scientists* from the UK and Italy denounce ongoing Israeli military aggression in Gaza in a letter to The Lancet, published today.

“On the basis of our ethics and practice, we are denouncing what we witness in the aggression of Gaza by Israel,” write the authors. “We ask our colleagues, old and young professionals, to denounce this Israeli aggression.”